FREEPORT, NEW YORK--The mother
of a teenager who attended a Massachusetts residential school has sued the
facility for causing her son emotional trauma, Newsday reported.

In her suit filed July 20, Evelyn Nicholson named as defendants the
Judge Rotenberg Educational Center and her local school district, which sent
17-year-old Antwone to the Massachusetts facility in August 2004.

Over the next 18 months, JRC used a device to deliver electric skin
shocks to the boy -- on 79 different occasions -- to change behavior related to
his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Nicholson has said that the institution's aversive therapy amounted to
corporal punishment, which is banned in New York and at least 26 other states.

At her request, the facility stopped using the shock treatments on
Antwone in February. In April, he was transferred back to New York, but to a
different school district.

Nicholson's attorney told Newsday that he had intended to just sue the
Freemont school district, but changed his mind after a former JRC staff told
him the facility smelled of burning flesh.

JRC, which houses about 150 youths from New York, has come under
scrutiny from education officials in both New York and Massachusetts over
allegations that its aversive treatments of students -- most of which have
disabilities -- are abusive and amount in some situations to torture.